Barrington school to review field trip procedure after students return late, parent upset

Friday

Oct 5, 2012 at 3:15 AM

By Liz Markhlevskayalmark@fosters.com

BARRINGTON — Middle School officials will conduct a full review of procedures and decision-making today pertaining to school field trips, after fifth-graders arrived home later than expected from a trip to Pawtuckaway Park on Wednesday.George Dale, father of a 12-year-old Middle School student, said his daughter was part of a group that got lost and “left behind” at Wednesday’s field trip, but school principal Michael Powers said Thursday that “no one got lost in the woods.”“None of these kids were actually left behind — that would have been the worst possible scenario,” said Powers. “We worked hard to ensure that, in fact, there were no kids lost in the woods.”Wednesday’s field trip was the Middle School’s first time bringing students to Pawtuckaway Park. According to Powers, the class hike was in advance of the upcoming New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) test, to give students physical exercise while developing teamwork.The fifth-grade class was brought to the park by two school busses, and arrived at about 9:40 a.m. Wednesday. The students were chaperoned by 11 school staff members and 10 parent chaperones, said Powers.The students, who were assigned to groups with chaperones, arrived to the top of Pawtuckaway Mountain by 11:30 a.m. After lunch, the students began hiking back down the mountain, but the return trail was longer than expected, and some students outpaced others, said Powers.According to Dale, his daughter was in a group of four students and two parent chaperones who got separated from others and got lost. His daughter also reported coming across two students who were lost and unsupervised, he said.But, according to the principal, the students who took longer coming down the trail were “picked up” for supervision by other chaperones who followed behind. So, while those students’ original chaperones moved ahead, adults who were initially following after those students met them and supervised them down the mountain.In response to Dale’s report to Foster’s, Powers said, “It appeared that they were lost or unaccompanied but in fact they really weren’t. There were so many adults there.”He also noted a few teachers walked behind everyone else on the trip, to ensure no one was left behind.By about 1:30 p.m., teachers at the park contacted the Middle School to inform administration they were running late. At approximately 1:55 p.m. a second call was made to the school informing administration the busses had not yet left Pawtuckaway Park due to some students still finishing the trail. At 2:05 p.m. Powers sent out a PowerAlert message to all parents, saying students on the field trip were running late returning to the school, according to Powers.He said in an effort to bring students who were already back from the mountain back to school as quickly as possible, the majority of fifth-graders were loaded into two awaiting busses and returned to school. Those students returned to school by 3 p.m., said Powers.As the majority of students were being returned to school, a third bus was on its way to pick up students who were still finishing the return trail at the mountain. This third bus arrived at the park by 3:20 p.m., and carried about 18 remaining students back to school. Those 18 students were back to the Middle School by approximately 4 p.m.Powers disputed Dales’ claim that his daughter returned close to 5 p.m.“I personally got his daughter off the bus,” said Powers.Dale said Wednesday he was concerned when school officials were unable to tell him where his daughter was when he contacted the school around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday.According to Powers, when Dale was asking him about the whereabouts of his daughter, Powers had just returned from a faculty meeting. During the meeting, the assistant principal and two administrative assistants were handling the calls to the bus companies and to the teachers at Pawtuckaway Park, and Powers did not have information readily available about which students were on which buses. “Certainly, I didn’t want to tell him something that wasn’t accurate,” said Powers. “I just asked him for a minute or two so I could ask all the adults who were working the phones where she was.”After the last group of students arrived to the school, some of them were driven home by the late bus. Others were picked up by parents, or driven home by school staff, such as paraprofessionals.Wednesday’s class hike resulted in school officials scheduling a full review of its field trip procedures. The review, scheduled for today, will be conducted with Powers, Superintendent Gail Kushner, and teachers involved in the field trip. The meeting will be an analysis of both decision-making and planning procedures pertaining to field trips.“We are taking it quite seriously, as we should,” said Powers.